Santa. How can be? How does he do it? How can one ordinary man deliver millions of presents in a single night?! It can’t be done, despite weak, tacked-on, magical explanations like flying reindeer, bottomless sacks, and the ability to whoosh up chimneys by laying a finger aside of one’s nose. Impossible. Unless… there is something deeper going on. Something that can’t be explained by the obvious, but that CAN be explained by a crazy, hair-brained theory we just came up with! So fire up your social media accounts, and start fakenewsing your friends, family, and coworkers IMMEDIATELY.

Firstly, why so many Santas? There’s folks dressed up like Santa everywhere. Getting stuck in chimneys, filling the local throne at the mall, hiding behind bushes at the park, getting arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct. Can a mere myth really inspire that level of disorganized, spontaneous imitation? Of course not. Being a Santa is no mere hobby, funtime, or seasonal income for our plus-sized bearded elders.

It’s a cult. A well-organized, fiercely-dedicated, intensely secret cult with rigid rules on appearance and behavior. Also, it’s like that movie Fight Club, only without quite as much beating each other bloody with fists. Members must take a solemn vow of Santitudity. They don’t only dress as Santa (called “taking the red”), grow a beard, and delight/terrify children. They not only swear to carry the torch of Christmas-itude, and to never deny the true existence of Santa. No, they actually must BECOME Santa. They undergo a drug-fueled initiation rite designed to help them believe that they, in fact, ARE Santa. Women are not explicitly excluded, but typically have trouble with the a beard-growing requirement. Beware, though. Once in, never try to get out. Apostates are secretly murdered and made to look like accidents. Don’t spill the beans, either. Those who attempt to reveal the cult’s existence are blacklisted and never get a good Christmas present again, forced into a sad existence of ugly sweaters, boring ties, fake-smelling bath sets, corporate coffee mugs, and a never ending array of socks and underwear, socks and underwear, SOCKS AND UNDERWEAR. And also sometimes murdered, just for variety.

Now, how can Santa Claus appear in different places at the same time? How can he be leading a small town parade whilst simultaneously ringing a bell in front of the Wal-Mart AND absorbing urine from terrified toddlers at the local mall? Most parents cross this horrible, faith-shaking, narrow bridge of faith by explaining the doppelgangers away as “helpers” or, that sure, THAT guy is just some dude in a cheap Santa suit, but there’s still a REAL Santa at the North Pole doing the REAL work of Christmas, while these chumps put on a dog and pony show for hicks like you.

But what if that’s not the case? What if … THEY ARE ALL SANTA? If Santa has powers beyond those of any mortal, why should we expect him to BE a mortal?! Why should we expect him to be like a human at all?! All the Santas are one.ALL THE SANTAS ARE ONE. Santa is a gestalt creature. He ONE entity with many many near identical bodies. Only a labor force in the thousands could pull off what Santa does in one night. So, what IS Santa?! Creepy, for one.

This leads us to our next theory. If Santa Claus cannot possibly be human, what can he then be? An alien? Now you’re just being ridiculous. The cabal of international bankers and Bilderberg Gnomes controlled by the Committee on Foreign Relations would unleash their army of blue helmets and black helicopters so fast, even your fluoridated-water dulled senses would register surprise as the North Pole was carpet-bombed back to the Triassic.

No, there’s a better explanation. What we humans call “Santa Claus” is merely the intrusion into our three dimensions of an extradimensional creature that exists outside of time and space as we know it. Just as a sphere crossing a two dimensional plane appears as a growing and shrinking circle, the intersection of this creature with our plane just happens to look like a large human in a red suit with a white beard. Since this… this… this… THING is not subject to our laws of physics, existing outside of our universe, it is a simple matter for it to reach into closed rooms, locked houses, and deliver presents to millions simultaneously. The more terrifying aspect is why it would chose to do so. We cannot impute human motives on such an unearthly creature that isn’t even made of matter as we know it, but an agglomeration of Planck-length one-dimensional vibrating strings in an eleven dimensional superuniverse. Even more terrifying is that we have misinterpreted the situation by assuming this entity even HAS motives. It does not want to make us happy, spy on us, or lull us into a false sense of security and then eat our souls. No, the annual appearance of “Santa” is merely the rhythmic equivalent of its heart beating, lungs breathing, or blood flowing. Or pooping. We merely choose to interpret this inexplicable phenomenon as a kindly old dude chucking presents from a magic flying 18th century equivalent of an SUV. We must instead capture, analyze, and dissect these “fingers” of the greater creature that we might learn how it operates. Then we can learn how to heal the dimensional rifts and weakened time/space continuum that has allowed these apparitions to penetrate our world and torment us annually. The true celebration can only come when our scientists forever eliminate Santa from reality.

But where science fails us, religion picks up the ball and runs with it, spikes it in the end zone, does a ref-defying taunty dance, and demands everyone agree it’s particular taunty dance is the one true taunty dance and there can be no others. Some stripes in the Christian rainbow don’t like Santa; seeing him as some kind of interloper in what should be Jesus’s exclusive turf. I mean, whose birthday is it? What’s the reason for the season? It must be aggravating. Also, Santa is an anagram of… SATAN! And as we all know, fun letter swapping games for bored vaguely literate people are always a font of uncorrupted religious truth forever. This final theory on the true nature of Santa Claus is for them:
Santa Claus isn’t against Jesus Christ. Santa Claus IS Jesus Christ. After crucifixion, returning from the dead, visiting friends and family, going on tour in the Americas, founding a bloodline in France, and generally having the most active posthumous career known to mankind, Jesus retired. He gained weight, turned gray, got bored, and chafed at the shackles of his own fame. He realized anything he then did as himself would be soon be overrun with his fans and supporters regardless of its merit. So, Jesus adopted a pseudonym, a spiffy new outfit, and reinvented himself. Yet, he remained true to two of his main interests. Jesus was a carpenter. Jesus loves the little children. So he uses his carpentry powers to make them toys. He uses his Son of God powers to monitor and track every child in the world’s good/evil levels, pick the most appropriate toy for each, make the toys, and get them all delivered all around the world on a single night. Jesus Santa is so selflessly awesome, that on HIS birthday, he gives YOU a present! You don’t even have to go pick it up! He delivers!

It’s the only explanation that explains everything, ANDputs the Christ back in Christmas.

A few years ago the boys in The VGG Comedy Collective held a fantasy draft for their dream SNL casts. Six members, six SNL casts hand picked from the first 30 years of the show. This week Rolling Stone Magazine published a ranking of all cast members of SNL. Not that I put much stock into these kind of lists, but I did want to see how our dream teams stacked up against the RS rankings. So here is a summary of out draft in the order the cast was picked and the RS Ranking for each member. One note, each team had to pick at least one news anchor. That explains Chase on here twice — once as a cast member the other as the Weekend Update Anchor.

The humor of the Van Gogh-Goghs has always been a group effort, the exceptions being Jason and T. Mike’s stand-up routines, Galen’s monologues, and Rob’s arrest for impersonating an astronaut. But this hasn’t always been the case. Early on in the plucky sextet’s comedy careers, each member dabbled in the art of comedy albums. Here is the known collection of VGG comedy albums, excluding foreign imports and bootlegs:

The Pillowheads were the Van Gogh-Gogh answer to the more-famous Coneheads. The Pillowheads (Charles as Puffy, Alan as Fluffy) are a cosmic pair of wackos, whose heads resemble pillows. Fluffy and Puffy encounter the strange ways of Earthlings in such "classic" bits as "Fluffy at the Pet Store" and "The Pillowheads Take the D-Train." Many critics panned this double-album, especially the first and last tracks, each consisting of ten minutes of Fluffy and Puffy babbling incoherently. The public, however, had a different opinion: they hated it. The difference between panning and hating is small, to be sure, but it is different. Unfortunately, this album is now out of print.

T. Michael Childs had one great idea: a Christmas comedy album. This is that album. He also had three terrible ideas. First, the title, Keepin' It Reel, did not convey the Christmas theme properly. Second, the album was released on Christmas Day, a day when no one wants to buy Christmas albums. Three, the material on the album deals neither with Christmas nor comedy, but rather is a psychotic rant about pancake batter. The only thing even remotely close to Christmas comedy is the track "Christmas Slug Bathhouses." This track starts with Childs screaming, "Christmas slug bathhouses!", then continued with his pancake batter diatribe. Sadly, T. Mike failed to keep it reel, or real. This album is no longer in print.

In the autobiography Galen: A Hernia Among Us, Galen Black listed this album as "his first California mistake."1 This live comedy album, taped live at the Hollywood Bowl, is truly a live album. "Live" was mentioned three times in the last sentence to emphasize that this is a live album. Other ways to identify this as a live album: the part in track 1 where Galen mumbles to no one in particular, "Can we start this over?"; the man in track 4 who screams, "You suck. Yeah, you, Galen Black, you suck!"; track 8, which is the murmurs of the crowd during the intermission; and track 9, when the stagehand comes on-stage and tells the crowd that Galen has gone home. Live live live live live. Live. Live live. This album is no longer in circulation.

Charles Rempel's first album, Who Be Dat Man?, was his homage to Cajun comedy. He knew nothing of Cajun comedy, though, or Louisiana for that matter. He thought All the King's Men was about the makers of King Kong. His accent was obnoxious at best and unintelligible at worst. Surprisingly, though, it was the only Rempel-related album to sell a million copies. Rempel still receives a couple of albums a week as blackmail threats, threats that he dutifully acknowledges and pays... in full. The album, thankfully, is no longer in circulation.

This album, the winner of eight platinum records, is the highest-seller of all the VGG albums, since everyone thought they were buying a George Carlin album. It also was the most litigious, as Rob Terrell was sued and later lost to George Carlin over copyright infringements. Rob's lawyers argued that the material was so mangled and unfunny, that the general public would not be able to understand the jokes, let alone that they were ripped off from Mr. Carlin. This album enjoyed a second wave of popularity when it was discovered in 1998 that columnist for the Boston Globe also stole from Carlin. Highlights include "The Seven Things You Can't Say When Plagiarizing George Carlin", and the famous line, "Hello, I'm George Carlin." Currently, this album is not in print.

"Pollak" is Rob's less-successful follow-up to "Things I Stole From George Carlin." Highlights include Rob's attempts to impersonate Pollak impersonating Inspector Columbo and Captain Kirk, as well as some lines from "The Usual Suspects." Recorded live at the Firg Auditorium in Boulder, Colorado, this album is unique due to its mixing; if the listener plays the second side of the album (or tracks 8-12 on the CD) and turns the stereo balance all the way to the left, he or she can actually hear the audience filing out of the auditorium in disgust.

The eponymously-titled first album by Jason Torchinsky was a saccharin-sweet journey through his inner psyche. An inner psyche filled with horror and disgust and pain and maladies that man was not meant to know. One track in particular, "Monsignor Happy's Daily Bouts with Depression", received moderate air-time on the Doctor Demento Radio Network. Jason learned through this album's poor sales the hard cold fact of emotions: when they see the light of day, you're ruined. Finished. If at all possible, supress all emotions. The album's highlight: the unlisted track at the end of the CD, which is a cover of "Stand By Your Man" by Lyle Lovett.

This album, probably Galen Black's finest work, failed to sell even a single copy. The reason was simple: the warning label. People just don't buy comedy albums with profanity. The sentence that took the censors over the top: on Track 11, entitled "Off the Scruff", Galen says, "I told my brother he was full of cr*p." A comedy masterpiece, sullied by Galen's penchant for potty-mouth. There are no available copies of this album.

This German bootleg import was found by Jason behind a Conoco station in Louisville, Kentucky. Why was he behind the Conoco? Well, it's a long story, but he was in this chat room and the guy... well, this is not important right now. What's important is that he found it. This album is a collection of skits performed by the Van Gogh-Goghs between 1993 and 1996. The sketches, then, were completely dubbed in German. Which, I guess you could say, is just some Germans ripping off our skits, but they did get a picture of Jason and Charles for their album cover, and Jason and Charles did get credit, and the Germans act was better than ours, so in the end we think it's okay. We're not sure if this album is still in stock, here or abroad.

Over on the FB, I posted the following to my status update and what follows is some very well made points about why iPhones are better than kids.

In an attempt to offer a suggestion to parents on how to avoid forgetting your child in the backseat of a locked car, a local newscast today suggested that I could place my cell phone in the pockets behind the front seats of my car as a way to insure that I don’t forget my child. Because no one would go that long without noticing they didn’t have their…..phone. <sigh>

Response by Alan Benson

Well Galen, not to be contrary, but I think there’s a good point in that story. Thanks to all my nieces and nephews, I’ve had many years of interacting with various revisions of KidOS and four brands of hardware (Benson, Glance, Mims, and Graves–plus many others owned by friends). Children are an interesting project, and more advanced versions of the OS are fairly functional, but they have yet to reach the level of sophistication of your average phone. Just look at some of the key areas where they fall short:

Cleanliness: Phones get smeared and marked with fingerprints. Children smear things and make fingerprint marks. Advantage: Phone.

Durability: Even with scratch-resistant materials, children are constantly getting scuffed. While children’s self-repair tools are really impressive and unique, these tools come with a cost. Honestly, I would rather have a permanent scratch on my phone than to be notified every five seconds that “I has a owie.” Advantage: Phone.

Spellcheck: Siri makes a lot of mistakes, but even she would correct “I has a owie.” Advantage: Phone.

Voice-to-Text: Admittedly, I haven’t used V2T with children as much as with phones, largely because my first experience was so terrible. No matter how slowly or clearly I spoke, my attempt to have June tell T. Mike “Pick me up outside Breadman’s–bring money for the bill” was mangled into “I love you daddy. Pick me up! Pick me up! Pick me up!” Her software captured the first part of the message, but the transmission stripped out all “From” info, date/time, and the urgent flag. (I still have dishpan hands from having to work to pay that bill.) While I was able to leave a message for Charles very effectively using his John device, it was because I was just saying “blahhhhhbobobobobo mama dada truck” while drooling and pooping. But again, no sender info or timestamp. Kids are simply not suitable for mission-critical communication. Advantage: Phone.

Volume control: Phone has buttons on the side and a mute function. Kids don’t. Need I even point out this is a big advantage: Phone?

Portability: Even those stupid giant wanna-be tablet phones can fit in a pocket. KidOS users are required to supplement their unit with large amounts of hardware and software just to go to the store. Advantage: Phone.

Games: I know that KidOS installs additional apps and games over time, but the fact that it doesn’t even ship with basic smiling functionality is shameful. And let’s be honest, until the OS gets updated multiple times, the options are crap. “Peekaboo” is fun for like two minutes, but it gets old fast. Same for “Pattycake” and “I’ll drop the toy, you pick it up, repeat.” Also, the fact that the few initial games on offer don’t unload from memory and just keep running for hours is super annoying. And yes, later games like “Catch” are more fun, but again, the retention of the game in memory for hours is annoying. Plus, the fact that all more advanced KidOS games are microtransaction-based (the “Mom, I need $100 so I can be on traveling team!” alert is so familiar to KidOS users) means that bills can get out of control. Advantage: Phone.

Music: I don’t know where the “Wheels on the Bus” file is stored in my nephews, but I have been unable to delete it. Plus, the fidelity of music from KidOS units is fairly poor. Notice that Ava’s playback of “Let It Go” strips out all background instrumentation and alters the voice. You don’t have to be an audiophile to see that it’s advantage: Phone.

From: [suppressed]
Subject: my boss does creep out #22...ALL THE TIME!
I swear to God....HE CREEPS ME OUT! (you've got to
picture him taking a drag off a cigarette, then
grabbing himself-rub, rub, "so what about that
blahblah"). He'll do it with customers in the
office-BUT, BEHIND HIS DESK! So the customer can't
see what he's doing! Is that creepy, or what? It's
like he's got a stale hoagie, or something, in
his pants. jeff t.

Now that the Van Gogh-Goghs have taught you how to waste time at work, you’ve probably found that your once-busy workdays have mellowed into the dull hazy soup of inertia every cubicle-dweller longs for. But working man and woman cannot live by soup alone, no matter how hazy it is. Somedays you need to spark a little action into the parade of soul-crushing utter boredom that you laughably call “a life” (no offense).

Based on research from the mighty VGG Labs, there’s no better way to generate a little worktime fun than by creeping the hell out of your co-workers. Using these 26 sure-fire tips, you will soon be the most popular person around the office (if, by “popular,” you mean the guy or gal most likely to inspire others to say “whoa, that person is creepy”).

As soon as someone you’re talking to is done using a pen, pick it up and lick it.

Walk out of bathroom, stop, pause a few seconds, take a few deep breaths, then dash back in.

Follow someone home, when they get to the door, honk, wave, say “so you’re ok then?” and drive off. Repeat until court order.

When the person you’re meeting with stands up, put your hand where they were sitting and say “ooh that’s warm.”

While carpooling, make the group stop at a drug store so you can buy condoms.

Place 50 framed pictures of the Olsen twins on your desk. For bonus creepout points, cut one of the twins out of all the pictures.

During an important meeting, lean forward to make a point while placing your hand firmly on someone else’s upper thigh.

Vaseline your hand, then shake someone else’s hand.

Give out framed pictures of yourself to every one of your co-workers

When someone is talking to you, take the opportunity to groom them.

When someone drops food, grab it and eat it.

Hug someone you’re not dating or related to just a little too long.

Keep underwear in your pocket and make a point of dropping it whenever you pull out your keys. Always say “so that’s where those got to!”

Constantly offer to take other people’s temperature.

Keep your hands abnormally cold, then be very touchy-feely.

Bring up in conversation that you know where to buy chloroform for cheap.

Whenever someone is in the bathroom, lean in close to the outside of the door so that your face is the first thing they see.

Make lots of noise while in a bathroom stall, then walk out very sweaty, clutching a picture of Johnny 5 from “Short Circuit.”

Call every woman you meet “mommy.”

Buy a hoagie, then stand in corner humping it.

Breezily annouce when you come in to work: “I peed my bed again last night.”

To: Everyone
From: The Van Gogh-Goghs
Subject: Wasting Time at Work
Date: Today

There are lots of people out there who just don’t understand the finer points of wasting time at work. Lots of people are so afraid of getting caught, they don’t waste time at work. They work the entire 8 hours. For those scared of being fired for being too slack, you are right to be afraid. There is a delicate balance you must find between not doing any work and doing too much at work. The bottom line is you must get your work done. A lot of people don’t like to hear that. They just want to do nothing. If you want to do nothing then stay at home, but don’t expect people to pay you for it.

To be an effective time waster, you have to chip away at the hours of the day. If you start goofing off for hours at a time, you’ll get caught and fired. You have to find many small ways to eat up time. You may find some of the following tips only waste a few seconds each, but seconds add up to minutes that add up to hours.

Drink Lots of Water
Water, Tea and Coffee make you urinate quicker and more often than other drinks. No one can blame you for normal bodily functions. Only a real jerk of a boss will yell at you for taking a leak. Once in the bathroom, take your time. I would even suggest that men take up the feminine habit of sitting during all trips to the toilet. Urinals were designed for speed, men. Don’t be robbed of those precious extra seconds of pulling down your trousers and pulling them back up again. (30 seconds to 2 minutes per trip)

Be CleanWhile you’re in the bathroom take an extra couple of seconds to wash your hands thoroughly. I see too many people rush through this exercise. Take your time washing your hands and most people will not notice. Barely get the tips of your fingers wet as you run out the bathroom door and everyone avoids touching things you touch. (13 to 32 secondes per trip to bathroom)

Be SloppyA good hour or two can be gained every few weeks if you keep your desk a mess. Friday afternoons and Monday mornings are perfect times to set aside for cleaning up your work area. Just say you want things neat for yourself when you start the week and “wah-lah” you have just made some time for yourself refiling papers, rearranging pens in your desk, and categorizing your push pins by color. (Which reminds me, always have the office manager order you the multi-colored push pin packs.) (28 minutes to an hour once a week)

The ComputerLoad your computer with unnecessary programs that make your machine run slower. While your waiting for the PC to process information sit back and relax. If the boss questions you just say, “Damn computers” He’ll laugh and agree with you and say something like, “Seems like we use to get more work done without those gall durn contraptions.” Agree with him and he’ll walk away never suspecting that you aren’t doing anything. (roughly 42 minutes a day)

The InternetThe World Wide Web is a red flag. Be very careful misusing the company PC to surf the web for personal enjoyment. Your boss knows the internet is a big waste of time and is watching for people who are doing web searches for MP3’s and games. The best way to use the internet to your time wasting advantage is to use it for all research. If you need a phone number for a client across town, use the internet to find it. Most people just reach for a phone book, which is by far faster than using the internet. Don’t miss this chance to legitimately use the internet for business and waste time. (roughly 9 to 33 minutes a day.)

Naps
Lots of people want to take naps at work. This is very dangerous and should only be attempted by the most seasoned napper. No matter how many news magazines do stories on how taking naps improve employee performance in other countries, you will never be paid to sleep here in the U.S of A. The USA work ethic hates sleep, even the good “8 hours a night” kind.

If you must take a nap you might try this idea from the “Nap Play Book”.

Nap #643 — Fill a coffee mug. Find a low traffic area in the office and spill the contents of the mug on the floor. Lay down on the floor face first with your coffee mug laying on the spill. The purpose is to make it look like you fell, passed out or tripped on something. After you place yourself in position, go to sleep. If someone finds you, they’ll rush to your aide. Have an excuse ready. They’ll think you are hurt or sick, but don’t let them send you home. You don’t want to eat up sick leave, that’s your personal time. Never repeat this exercise in the same location and don’t do it too often. This nap will be less effective if you snore. If you snore while you sleep it’s tougher to pass off sleep as unconsciousness. (Naps can buy you any where from 10 minutes to several hours depending on where you take the nap)

Office Conversations
Enter business conversations around the office that are taking place in the open. You don’t have to be a part of the conversation very much. The important thing is to be there physically. Just nod your head a few times. Beware that others in the conversation may turn to you for comment. You’ll need to be prepared with a good quick exit line or a response. One good answer that can buy time is, “I’m sorry, I was thinking about how we’re gonna manage to do everything on time and still stay on budget.” They’ll either repeat the question or continue without your input. If they do the latter, you might want to excuse yourself and move on back to your desk. (23 minutes to 1.3 hours)

Meetings
Go to every meeting that is appropriate for you to attend. Everyone knows meetings are a colossal waste of time, so use them. You’d be surprised at how many people miss the opportunity at wasting time by ducking out of or avoiding meetings. Once you’re in meeting, it’s all about you. You can plan your weekend, think about the game you watched the night before, or fantasize about Georgia/George in Legal. (According to Office Studies International the average meeting takes 42 minutes and meetings happen every 5 hours. Count on 2-3 meetings a week)

I hope these tips help you be more productive in wasting time. Remember, you can’t waste the company’s time if you don’t work for the company. With a little effort no one will ever know how little you do.

You know what I love? Christmas Albums. You know what I hate? Christmas albums I can’t listen to because the artists never made them. That really bahs my humbug. Here are a few of the great Christmas albums that never were, but maybe there’s a chance for a Christmas Miracle and one or two of these will get recorded someday.

Top 10 Christmas Albums That To Date Have Not Been Made

10. I Heard the Byrds on Christmas Day
9. We Three Tenors
8. Kiss Under the Mistletoe
7. Avril Maria
6. Have Yourself a Cousin Larry Little Christmas featuring Balki — mostly spoken word by Mark Linn-Baker
5. The First Noel…Gallagher Christmas Album
4. The Police Navidad
3. Miley Kalikimaka
2. In Excelsis Devo
1. Martin Mull Serves Up Mulled Wine Just in Time For Christmas (& and other Holiday Delights) featuring Fred Willard — the album cover is very important here. It’s a glass of red wine with several Martin Mull’s severed heads with look of comic shock floating in it.

Posted in Update | Comments Off on Top 10 (un)Favorite Unmade Xmas Albums

Party fouls: let’s avoid them this year on September 11th. The first and most vital element in avoiding a 9/11 anniversary observance faux pas is: don’t CELEBRATE it. Happy holidays you celebrate, tragic anniversaries you OBSERVE. Americans are terrible at observing the observeful holidays; we’re all about celebrating the celebrateful holidays; stores put up Christmas stuff the same week as Halloween stuff. New Year’s Eve? PARTY! Christmas! PRESENTS! But Labor Day? “Outta my way, I gotta cram in one more summer beach trip.” Memorial Day! “Um, tire sale?” Arbor Day! “Is that still a thing?”

Here are some helpful tips to help you not look like an insensitive, subhuman douchebag of raging proportions on the anniversary of 9/11.

Terms to avoid. Please avoid saying or writing any of the following words, phrases, or memes either directly before or directly after the phrase “9/11.”

Happy

Party

Booyah

Word up

FTW

Epic Fail

LOL

Facepalm

Conspiracy

No Piñatas. Period. It doesn’t matter how tasteful your piñata is, or whether you got one at the store or spent hours making it yourself. It doesn’t matter if it’s filled with delicious candy or sensitive haikus about each of the nearly 3,000 victims. It doesn’t matter if it’s even one of Saddam, Bin Laden, or Bush; the whole concept of whacking things with sticks to smash them open and shove your way to greedily snatch up whatever is spilling out is antithetical to a 9/11 anniversary, metaphorically, and socially.

No Cake.

Again, this goes back to the whole celebrating versus observing thing. Cake is too delicious, too fun, too light-hearted, no matter what flavor, what shape, how it’s decorated, or what’s written on it in sweet, sweet, can I lick the beater please please please, frosting. Really, all sweets should be avoided: candy, cookies, brownies, blondies, puddings, mousses, flans, probably Jello, ice cream, sundaes, sherbets, Italian ices, frozen novelties, and especially pies of any kind, except shepherd’s and pot. Kale is the most appropriate food to eat for a 9/11 observance. It’s really good for you, you can work it into many dishes, and it tastes gawdawful. It’s the new spinach! Really, any vegetable, especially raw, is well-suited to your 9/11 observance gathering.

No Drinking Games. We’re not saying you can’t have an alcoholic beverage on a 9/11 anniversary. This is America, after all, and if we can’t drink, then the terrorists will have won. We’re not even saying drink responsibly. We can’t think of any other event about which we’d like to drink until we feel better, until we forget, until we can’t feel feelings anymore. But what you should not do is hold drinking games, where everyone downs a shot or Jello shooter (and didn’t we just tell you no Jello?) after hearing a selected word like “tragedy” on TV. Partly because it’s bad taste, partly because you’ll die of alcohol poisoning.

No Tire Sales. Or mattress sales. Nothing says “disrespected American holiday” like a themed tire and/or mattress sale. We know sales are sluggish and could use a shot in the arm, and everybody needs tires and mattresses at some point, and we need to patriotically purchase American-made tires and mattresses to support the American tire-and-mattress industry (NYSE: TAMI), but a 9/11 anniversary is not the time to do it. And if you are a tire or mattress vendor, please for the love of God, especially do not dress up in any kind of costume and make a homemade TV commercial for your 9/11 tire/mattress sale. Please, please, please.

Do Not Wonder What’s the Big Deal. Do not do this. At least not out loud. You’re young, or foreign, and the rest of us would all just superduper appreciate it if you would kindly shut the F up until we’re all dead, and THEN you can safely bitch about what a stupid day this is and who cares even, and attend tire sales in peace. Just like Grandpa and the Kennedy assassination.

Jebus, all these “don’ts” we hear you cry. What’s actually allowed?! Well, here’s one: Do… give it time! In time, 9/11 will be safely absorbed into history and American will be able to breeze right by this holiday, drinking, eating, hating, whoring, and buying all the tires and mattresses at steep discounts we can stand. Look at Presidents’ Day, Labor Day, Memorial Day, and I would say Arbor Day, but that can’t still be a thing, can it? All these holidays/observances have been safely commuted from meaningful, heartfelt expressions of national sentiment (okay, President’s Day was never meaningful), into lame, random days off from our soul-crushing jobs. The system works. Time passes, wounds heal. And 9/11 will never mean to our children and grandchildren what it means to us. And that’s the way it should be.